In an effort to reduce the time, money, and resources required to administer and manage corporate data and applications, many companies have consolidated and centralized servers, corporate data and applications. One benefit of consolidation is that valuable business information, such as confidential documents or intellectual property, is stored in a central location managed and controlled by the company. Although consolidation and centralization have reduced some costs and have produced some benefits, centralized data and applications introduce additional challenges in providing access to data and applications. One such challenge involves a remote user trying to access information, such as applications and data files, over a public network, a non-company device, or other security vulnerable user scenarios.
For example, a remote user in a vulnerable configuration may try to access a resource on a private or corporate network via a virtual private network connection. The user may be on a public network, such as a kiosk at an airport, or on a non-corporate computing device, such as a home computer. If the user was on a corporate controlled computing device within the corporate network, the company may desire the user to have full access to a document. But when the user is remote, the company may prevent access to the document as the company is concerned about the security of the document accessed under such user scenarios. For example, the company does not want the document to be stored or printed remotely. Preventing access reduces the productivity of the remote user. However, granting access to the remote user via the vulnerable configuration increases the security related vulnerabilities to the valuable business information and intellectual property.
Therefore, systems and methods are desired to improve the level of control of access of remote users to centralized applications and data files and to control the actions the user can perform on these centralized applications and data files.